


Kentucky Suhoor

by ama



Category: Justified
Genre: Banter, Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Food, M/M, Muslim Character, Queer Themes, Ramadan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 18:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6482419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that Tim dislikes Ramadan. He just also really likes sleeping, alcohol, and sex with his boyfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kentucky Suhoor

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about Tim and OCs and his time in the Rangers and tried to write a fic wherein he falls in love with an Afghan citizen who serves as an interpreter and later comes to the US on a Special Immigrant Visa; it wasn't working until rivlee sent me a bunch of domestic meme questions and ta dah! this happened. ooh, also, I have a faceclaim for Khalil: Iranian actor [Dominic](http://cdn.indiewire.psdops.com/dims4/INDIEWIRE/d017894/2147483647/thumbnail/680x478/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdl9fvu4r30qs1.cloudfront.net%2Fe8%2F18%2F8af5ad134d05811504d5a5bcac18%2Fdominic-rains.jpg) [ Rains](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/flashforward/images/9/92/Dominic_Rains.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100131180350). so that's fun.

Tim woke automatically when the body in bed beside him stirred, and assumed that it was time to get up. For a few moments he lazed in bed still, feeling sorry for himself, but then he threw off the blankets, stood up, and had started rifling through his drawer looking for running shorts before he caught sight of the clock, which was proudly showing that it was just past 5am. He swore foully under his breath and fell back onto the bed. He had every intention of falling asleep again, until he heard Khalil moving around in the kitchen, and his stomach growled. He muttered “fuck” again and then raised his voice.

“Can I say something rude and offensive?”

“I would say ‘no’ except I think that betrays the foundation of our relationship.”

“Ramadan sucks balls.”

Tim yawned and stood up again. He shuffled into the kitchen to find his boyfriend bent slightly over a pot on the stove, biting his lip to keep from laughing out loud. He straightened when he saw Tim and schooled his face into a serious expression.

“You can’t use that kind of language around me,” he admonished. “It’s haram.”

“Everything’s haram,” Tim grumbled. He fell against Khalil’s body, resting his head on his shoulder.

“This korma isn’t, and neither are the mantu leftover from last night--and the sooner you let me move the sooner you can fight me for them.”

“Compelling argument.”

Tim pressed a smacking kiss to the side of Khalil’s neck and moved over to the fridge. It was completely empty of beer--they were having guests over for iftar at least once a week, so Tim had decided to be polite and clear out--but chock full of food. Leftovers, mostly, or things that had been prepped beforehand, things that could be thrown into a microwave, oven, or saute pan at a moment’s notice. He pushed around a bit and found two containers of dumplings. He held them up, alternating between one and the other, and Khalil said, “Both. The mantu are on the left, those go in the microwave. The ashuk are fresh. I’ll put on some boiling water, they only need a few minutes. And there should be a small Tupperware of green sauce to go with them, too.”

Tim set the various dishes on the counter and put a pot of water on the stove. Then he nudged Khalil over and put on a pan for scrambled eggs, too. They were silent for a few minutes, but the kitchen was loud--the water hissing, microwave running, the spoon in Khalil’s hand scraping against the bottom of the soup pot. Tim stared down at his eggs, bleary-eyed. He had been scrambling them for a long time; he was waiting for the pot to boil so they could cook the dumplings at the same time.

“Look on the bright side,” Khalil said around a yawn. “You get to eat all of this, and then _you_ get lunch.”

“Yeah, but I feel real guilty about that, and I don’t get any of the spiritual satisfaction,” Tim drawled.

“Inshallah, if you wanted to enjoy the spiritual as well as physical fruits of your labor--”

“Stooooop.”

Khalil grinned and blew a kiss. It was an old joke, going back to their days in Afghanistan. Khalil had been assigned to Tim’s unit as an interpreter, which meant that anyone with half a brain or a modicum of good manners ought to have been fawning at his feet. There had been a few Rangers, though, who had been stupid enough to not understand the difference between the Taliban and Afghan civilians, and rude enough to wax eloquently on the subject in Khalil’s hearing. Once, a guy named Davids had even had the nerve to press Khalil at mess once and try to get him to admit that the Quran itself mandated beheadings for people who refused to convert to Islam. Khalil had looked at him, straight-faced, and said in a serene voice, “Inshallah, if one can open one’s heart to the glory and goodness of Allah and the truth of His most holy word, beheading not be necessary.”

Most of the guys in the room had just sat there awkwardly, under the misapprehension that someone for whom English was not even a second but a _fourth_ language could not be able to wield sarcasm with such deadly efficiency. Tim, who was a little shit, had recognized a fellow, and laughed his head off.

After that, it had become a running joke. Khalil always began the same way, piously intoning “Inshallah…” and spouting off something poetic and overdone. Tim had even tried it himself once or twice, in an exceptionally loud voice, whenever Davids was around.

So yeah, rudeness and offensiveness pretty much was the foundation of their relationship.

Just as Tim was beginning to discover all the secrets of the universe in his scrambled eggs, a thought occurred to him: this was the first time he had actually cooked in their apartment in a week. That always happened during Ramadan. Khalil would, of course, cook all the foods his family had made for their pre- and break-fast meals, and he spent a lot of time socializing with the (relatively small) Muslim population of Lexington and bringing back Lebanese, Pakistani, Jordani, Malaysian food. Occasionally Tim would help with prep work--he could chop and measure things on command, although Khalil didn’t trust him with anything that would affect the actual flavor of a dish--but that was something different than actually having to plan and shop and do the bulk of the cooking. And he had been so busy at work lately that he hadn’t even had time to feel guilty about it.

“We got any plans for Saturday night?” he asked thoughtfully.

“You say ‘we’ like you won’t be in Harlan til midnight,” Khalil murmured. Tim bumped him with his hip.

“I do work in Lexington, you know.”

“Theoretically you do.”

Tim looked up at him suspiciously, and sure enough there was a teasing smile on the man’s face. Tim wanted to be grumpy. He had had a lot of practice at being grumpy, and he was good at it, but the problem was that Khalil was _cute_. He had a long face--literally--that often looked long figuratively speaking as well but when he smiled… damned if his eyes didn’t light up. Tim was pretty sure he’d led the man get away with murder. It was infuriating.

He turned away from the stove and put his hands on Khalil’s shoulders, tilting his head up for a real good-morning kiss. He ran his hand through Khalil’s silky black hair, and he hummed happily in response.

“At what point does me kissing you stop being halal?” Tim asked with a crooked smile.

“I’ll let you know,” Khalil promised.

Before they reached that point, though, the water began boiling in earnest. Tim’s stomach had reached a pretty steady rumble, and he turned away with only a little reluctance to start dropping dumplings into the pot. He poured his eggs into the pan, too, just as the korma started to simmer. Khalil turned down the heat and went to set the table with plates, silverware, orange juice, bread, peaches, and Ho Hos.

Tim had long since stopped trying to figure out the Ho Hos. Someone had got them in a care package on base once, and Khalil had decided they were the king of desserts--good enough that he was willing to trade his mom’s homemade sheer pyra for it, which just about every American thought was a losing deal on his end. They were no longer a rarity, of course, but his admiration had not diminished. Tim chocked it up to an amusing personal quirk, like the way Rachel always picked out the red Skittles before any of the others, or the way Tim himself just happened to do a perimeter sweep each night before he went to bed. No rhyme or reason to it.

“Saturday night,” he said, “I’ma make beef burgoo with cornbread. Fried chicken, sweet potatoes. Some kinda greens. And my grandmama’s lemon chess pie. Or pecan pie, if you want, I think we got some molasses still in the cabinet.”

“I’ve heard of burgoo; in theory I know it’s edible. What in the world is chess pie?”

“Don’t you doubt my baking skills,” Tim grinned. “You’ve had my cornbread.”

“I have had your cornbread.”

“It’s damn good, ain’t it?”

“It is very good.”

“So trust me, once you taste my grandmama’s chess pie, you won’t be sneering. Now I know it may not be your traditional iftar fare, but it’s gonna be so good, we’ll have every hillbilly in the state of Kentucky banging down our door. Boyd Crowder might even show up.”

“Please don’t invite Boyd Crowder.”

The eggs were done. Tim spooned a portion onto each plate, and Khalil started scooping dumplings out of the pot. They sat down to eat, just as the birds began their irritating pre-dawn warbling. Tim savored the meal as he considered the day before him. It was going to be a long one--he had early morning prisoner transport, which sucked, but what the hell, he was up. The post-lunch shift, though, that was going to be a bitch. Khalil got to nap in the privacy of their own home; Tim would have to steal a few winks in the evidence room, if he was lucky. He was debating whether it would be possible to sneak into Art’s office and crash on his couch when the chief took lunch, and then Khalil spoke in a would-be casual voice.

“You could invite other people, if you like. Rachel, Raylan. Even your boss, as long as we get a chance to clean up first.”

Tim glanced up in surprise just as he stuffed a dumpling in his mouth.

“Why?”

“I have friends over. You can have friends over.”

“I wouldn’t call Art a friend, exactly. And I’m mortally offended that you would consider Raylan to be one.”

“Regardless,” Khalil said, waving a hand elegantly. “It was just a suggestion, since you’re going to put so much work into cooking. I’ll call Samar and Rebecca instead.”

“I can invite Rachel,” Tim said. He was still puzzled, and cast a curious look at Khalil, who was studiously examining his plate. “And I guess Raylan, too, though I’ll bet you any amount of money he’s never heard of an iftar. We’ll call it a dinner party. And… I don’t know, maybe if you invite Adam, I’ll see if Leslie and Art want to come.”

Adam was, for all intents and purposes, Khalil’s uncle. Adam was the only other man in the greater Lexington area who had actually been born in Afghanistan, as far as they knew; he hadn’t lived there for forty years, but that made him family. He was a squat, bearded man with a booming laugh who liked fishing and showing off pictures of his grandkids, and Tim figured the only way that inviting Art to a sober iftar meal with his not-yet-disclosed boyfriend and a bunch of other 30-year-olds would _not_ be awkward was if Adam came, too. Kindred spirits and all that.

“Good,” Khalil said.

“I’ll need help with the food for that many people. And most of it can’t be made that far in advance, so you’ll have to cook in the middle of the fast.”

“I can do that.”

“Okay then.”

“Do you not want to invite them?”

“No. I mean… I guess I don’t have a problem with it or anything. It’s just not something I ever thought of.” Tim hesitated. “You know… Raylan and Art are marshals. That makes them a bit smarter than a box of rocks. Even if I tell them you’re my roommate, they might think we’re dating.”

“What would give them that entirely wrong impression?” Khalil muttered. Tim’s lips twitched in acknowledgement rather than amusement.

“You know what I mean.”

Khalil crossed his arms and leaned against the table. There was a thoughtful pause and then he looked at Tim, his deep brown eyes cautious.

“Would that bother you?”

Three years ago, Tim had not been out to anybody at work, and he hadn’t wanted to be. It wasn’t fear, exactly, just… he liked his privacy, and he didn’t think having a little bit of discretion was entirely unwarranted, given that he was a law enforcement officer in goddamn Kentucky. But in the years since, he had come out to Rachel, dropped several broad hints to Raylan and various other marshals in the office, and pondered telling Art. It wasn’t fear of disapproval that held him back, just the reluctance to deal with small talk and questions that actually involved his love life--and some of it was the worry that coming out would implicate Khalil, too, seeing as they lived together. It hardly seemed fair to push a man from “homosexual activity is illegal in your country” to “yeah so your boyfriend is just going to broadcast your sex life to everyone he knows, hope that’s okay” inside of five years.

But he had to admit that the word “roommate” had been tripping over his tongue of late.

“Nope,” he said finally, digging into his eggs. “Wouldn’t bother me. You?”

“No, it would not bother me.” Khalil picked up a dumpling, considered it, and put it down again. He took a sharp breath. “Lately--I think--” He paused. “The past few months I’ve…” He frowned and shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t want to over-think it. I don’t mind.”

He reached over the table to squeeze Tim’s hand and smiled, and Tim obeyed the Pavlovian-like instinct to lean over and kiss him. Then Khalil glanced at the clock and began shoveling food into his mouth with more dedication; dawn was approaching.

“I can tell them ahead of time, if you want. Make sure they don’t gawk in front of Samar and the rest.”

“Samar knows,” Khalil said nonchalantly.

“Since _when_?”

“Since I told him two days ago. He thinks I can do better.”

“Well, he’s an idiot. You never told me you told him.”

“I was going to, but that night you were in Harlan until midnight,” Khalil said sweetly.

He stood and ruffled Tim’s hair--to protests--as he went to pour himself a glass of water. He snagged a few more leftover mantu from the tupperware container and ate them cold, and unwrapped his Ho Hos.

“Here,” Tim said. “You can have mine, too.”

He got up and began cleaning the kitchen.

“Bless you. Are you going for a run?”

“In a little bit, yeah. You gonna join?”

“No, I have prayers.”

“I can wait.”

Khalil gave him a long-suffering look.

“Tim, I can’t drink any _water_.”

“... It is very early in the morning.”

Khalil chuckled and finished his ridiculously over processed cake-and-cream concoction. He took a knife from the drawer and one of the peaches from the table and dug the blade into it until he hit the stone. Slowly he turned the fruit over, slicing it in two. The peach was ripe, and juice dribbled down his wrist. Khalil’s eyes flickered at the still-dark window and then at the clock. Nodding to himself, he twisted the two halves of the peach until they split and dug out the stone. He held half of the peach out to Tim.

Tim accepted it, but he didn’t bite in just yet. He leaned against the counter and watched Khalil eat, and thought absently about how much had changed in the past few years. The apartment had been almost empty when Khalil first arrived; Tim and his Ranger buddies had bought some basic groceries, furniture, a lamp, and some blankets and pillows, but it had still felt somewhat like a hotel room, and Khalil had moved around like a guest, worried about overstepping or knocking things over. Now the apartment looked… well, like it had two people living in it. It wasn’t messy by any stretch of the imagination, but the fridge was crammed with food and the bookshelves piled with paperbacks. There was a calendar on the wall dotted with scribbled notes and shopping lists, and in the corner of the living room Khalil had placed his prayer rug and a plant that, so far, they had not killed.

He watched as Khalil finished his half of the peach and sucked some of the sticky juice off his finger, and thought about the first time they had kissed; he had tasted sweet then, too, like the bourbon Tim had offered half as a joke. Khalil had decided the following morning that the alcohol and the kiss had both been mistakes, and Tim--who hadn’t anticipated either--had done a stellar job of pretending that he hadn’t been disappointed. Still, that night… it was a good memory.

He was not a sentimental man, and it wasn’t the right kind of day for sentiment anyway. A random Tuesday in June, at the asscrack of dawn, with a prisoner transport to look forward too. Not exactly romantic. Khalil looked at him, an eyebrow twitching quizzically, and Tim tried to shake himself out of whatever odd mood had struck him.

“What?” Khalil asked.

“Nothing.”

“Are you going to eat that?”

Tim considered the peach half thoughtfully.

“In a minute,” he said breezily. “It’s still a bit dark out, and I think I like to eat peaches during the daytime, when the mood’s right. You know what I mean? With the yellow and the bits of red and orange, it looks kind of like a sunrise, don’t it? So I think I’ll just--”

“You’re an asshole,” Khalil chuckled as he walked into the living room, and Tim gave a scandalized gasp.

“Hey man, you can’t use that kind of language--don’t you know it’s Ramadan?”

**Author's Note:**

> 'Ramadan sucks balls' is a direct quote from a Muslim friend who was fasting and quitting smoking all at the same time; I wouldn't have put it in a fic on my own initiative, but I thought it was literally one of the funniest things I'd ever heard, so I included it with her blessing. Rest assured, Tim doesn't mean it, and Khalil knows he doesn't mean it, and it in no way impedes Khalil's ability to have a peaceful and blessed Holy Month.


End file.
